INTEGRAL

The International Gamma-Ray Astrophysics
Laboratory (INTEGRAL) of the European Space Agency was successfully launched
on October 17, 2002. It was lifted off from Baikonur in Kazakhstan on
a Russian Proton launcher and is now on a 72-hour elliptical orbit,
ranging from 9,000 km up to 155,000 km from Earth.
INTEGRAL is the successor of the ESA gamma-ray observatory Cos-B
and the NASA gamma-ray Observatory CGRO. It will produce a complete map
of the sky in the soft gamma-ray waveband and it is capable
of performing high spectral and spatial observations in gamma rays.
The observatory is also equipped with X-ray and optical detectors
to provide simultaneous observations in these wavebands.